A distributed computing service can be provided to client devices by multiple instances of the computing service. Typically, a client device can interact with any one of the instances to access the distributed computing service. The instances of the computing service may be hosted by multiple computing devices and/or virtual servers. Load balancers distribute client requests across the multiple instances, so as to keep the multiple computing devices and/or virtual servers from becoming over-burdened.
Network devices generally process data packets based on address information associated with the data packets. For example, a router typically forwards a received data packet to a next network destination (a “next-hop”) based on an address associated with the data packet, e.g., a destination address indicated in header information for the received data packet.